


all along the shore

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 17:22:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13979916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Helena and Sarah take a birthday road trip.





	all along the shore

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 34th birthday, lovely girls.

i.

Helena in the passenger’s seat, hair a tangled mess, trying to get Sarah to sing along to the radio. “ _Sestra_ ,” she says, “ _sestra_ , no one is here to hear you having feelings. Be loud!”

“Think you got that covered,” Sarah says. It’s true: Helena has been belting at the top of her lungs since they left town, throwing herself against the windows and into the empty space of the car.

“ _Sarah_ ,” Helena says.

“Fine,” Sarah says, and cranks the radio up, and sucks in a breath.

ii.

The drive takes hours and hours. Through a combination of begging, yelling, barking (as in yelling and as in literal barking), singing, and sighing, Helena manages to get her hands on the steering wheel for fifteen minutes of it.

Afterwards, Sarah takes the wheel back. They both sit in silence; the roads flash by them in one long blur.

“I am sorry,” Helena says, “that I put dent in S’ truck.”

“She would’ve laughed,” Sarah says.

Quiet.

Helena puts her hand over Sarah’s hand. Squeezes. Sarah shudders out a sigh, grabs Helena’s hand in hers. The silence is aching and it’s beautiful: she is so sick of people telling her _sorry_ , or saying what Siobhan meant to them. Siobhan never meant enough to them. Siobhan always meant too much.

“She would’ve,” Sarah says.

“Or she would have been angry,” Helena says. “Because I am shit driver.”

“You really are,” Sarah says.

“ _Sestra_ Alison will not let me in small van anymore.”

“Smart of her,” Sarah says. She squeezes Helena’s hand.

iii.

“Uh. Something…grey.”

“That car.”

“No.”

“ _That_ car.”

“No, meathead.”

“Everything is grey on roads. Pick better.”

“You be a better guesser.”

“No _you_.”

“It’s not my fault!”

“Is.”

“No!”

“Is!”

“No!”

“Is it _that_ car.”

“No, Helena, it’s not that car.”

iv.

They pull over for lunch at a shitty roadside diner. Helena sits across from Sarah, again; when their food comes she pulls a wry face, _I know it’s weird_. She’s ordered Jell-O again, optimistically. Sarah got a salad. She is trying to be a better person, and she’s really just not very good at it. Cosima would probably be enthusiastic about this salad; Sarah just stabs it a few times with her fork.

“Thank you for taking me,” Helena says. “To the big water.”

Sarah sucks in a breath to use for something shitty and weak like _it’s nothing_ or _it’s fine_ or _it’s whatever_.

“Thanks for coming with me,” she says instead.

“Many welcomes.”

Sarah shanks her salad a few more times. Slowly, Helena slides a plate of pancakes across the table. It’s blueberry; their favorite.

“Here,” Helena says. “Instead of lettuce.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. She takes the plate. “Thanks.”

v.

“The line’s _the ring of the truncheon thing_ , meathead. Got nothing to do with lunch.”

“London Calling!”

“It’s not that part of the song y—”

“ _I live by the river! London Calling!_ ”

“You’re gonna take my bloody ears out.”

vi.

“We have yellow ghost message from _sestra_ Cosima.”

“Shit, where are they now?”

Helena shrugs, pokes some more at her phone. “She is with _kokhana_ Delphine. She says many happy returns.”

“Here, point the camera at me.”

Helena does. Sarah turns away from the road to make a goblin face, listens to the _click_ of Helena’s phone camera, turns back. Helena begins meditatively doodling on the Snapchat photo of Sarah.

“What’re you drawing.”

“Nothing,” Helena says, and sends it.

“Bet it wasn’t nothing.”

“Nothing,” Helena says again, voice airy.

Sarah grumbles to herself. After a moment of drumming her fingers on the steering wheel: “Alison send anything?”

“No,” Helena says, slumping in her seat. “I know how it goes. Arthur is pooping. Always he is pooping. Very proud of his poops. They are—” (she splays her hands dramatically) “—everywhere.”

“They’re terrors, aren’t they,” Sarah says. In her peripheral vision Helena spins and stares at Sarah, her eyes blurry smears of earnest white.

“I love them,” she says frantically. “Sarah, I love them.”

“I know!” Sarah says. “Wasn’t what I meant. Just – you can love ‘em and they can still be monsters, yeah?”

“I love them,” Helena says again.

“Meathead. I know.”

Helena nods to herself, over and over, and settles back in her seat. “You know?” she says.

“Everyone knows. Could light the bloody sun with how much you love ‘em, Helena.”

“Good,” Helena says. Again, quieter: “Good.”

vii.

Helena snores. Not loudly, just a little growling burble. Sarah doesn’t snore – or at least she doesn’t think she does. Felix would’ve teased her about it by now if she had, surely. Cosima doesn’t snore. Helena, though – this continuous sound, low and steady.

Sarah thinks their hearts have settled into rhythm. She doesn’t lean over to check Helena’s pulse, doesn’t grab her sleeping wrist or touch the awkward slumped crook of her neck where it’s leaning her head against the window. She just knows. Their hearts are pumping the same steady beat, rolling through the rhythm of Helena’s breathing, giving her happy dreams.

viii.

“You dream about anything?” Sarah says, later.

“We were walking through _sestra_ Alison’s neighborhood,” Helena says. “Also it was carnival. Lights and sounds and colors. We had all day to go through the lovely carnival neighborhood. My babies were there, and they were butterflies. You were smiling.”

“Good dream,” Sarah says quietly.

“Special birthday dream,” Helena says. “For you and me. On and on forever with no sad times.”

The road unfurls like a grey ribbon in the sun.

ix.

The radio has been turning up only static for the last half hour or so; Helena turned it off, is humming made-up songs that unfold from her mouth like magician’s scarves. Sarah watches the road. She has never been on this road before, which is strange to think about.

“We don’t have to go back,” she says.

“Yes we do,” Helena says. “For my babies. And for Kira’s science fairs in two Wednesdays. And suburbia potluck. And your job applyings.”

Sarah bangs her fingers against the edge of the steering wheel. “We don’t have to, though,” she says. “Yeah? We could keep driving. It’d all happen even if we weren’t there.”

She doesn’t look away from the road to see Helena watching her. She doesn’t want to see the way Helena knows her.

“You are right, _sestra_ ,” Helena says. “We don’t have to go back.

“I want to, though,” she says.

“Me too,” Sarah says.

Helena sighs and leans back in her seat. She sighs the way dogs do, with a lot of feeling and effort. Sarah likes that about her.

“You ever scared?” Sarah says. “Just bloody terrified.”

“Every day,” Helena says. “All of the days. Sometimes only for a second. Sometimes every minute.”

“What do you do.”

Helena shrugs a shoulder. “Keep going.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “me too.”

x.

When Sarah comes out of the bushes, zipping up her belt, she finds Helena rummaging around in the grass by the side of the road. “Look,” she says, and holds up a bottle cap.

“Put that down, you don’t know where that’s been.”

Helena tilts it from side to side; the light flips a coin onto her face and moves it around her cheekbones. “Pretty,” she says.

“It’s garbage.”

“Pretty,” Helena decides, and pockets it.

xi.

“That cloud looks like cotton.”

“Helena, that isn’t how you play this game.”

xii.

“Something…blue.”

“Is it the sky.”

“Oh. Yes. You are winner!”

“There’s nothing else that’s blue on this whole bloody road, is there.”

“Bad sport.”

xiii.

“The ice age is coming!”

“The sun’s zoomin’ in!”

“Melting expected!”

“The wheat is growin’ thin!”

“Engines stop running!”

“But I have no fear!”

“’cause London is drowning, I—”

“ _I live by the river!_ ”

xiv.

“Oh, shit. Sorry. Shit. S used to play this song a lot, I – uh. Didn’t realize it was still on my…shit. Sorry. I can drive.”

“You can pull over. Okay to cry, _sestra_.”

“No. I can drive. I can drive.”

xv.

“And Kira’s just thrown up all over my bloody jacket and S is standing there with her mouth wide bloody open and Felix says – he says – stop _laughing_ , meathead, I haven’t even told the bloody punchline yet – Felix says _looks like you should have let me borrow the jacket after all._ And then he just – prances off! And Kira’s laughin’ like she’s just gotten a bloody pony and S just raises her eyebrows at me and _leaves me there_. Bloody worst. Had to throw the jacket away, what a waste.”

xvi.

“The nuns never found us, because we were hiding in building bones. All day they were looking! _Helena you have to brush your hair, you are devil child, nobody will ever want you,_ blah blah. And we were up up high eating their biscuits. Good day. Full belly.

Oh. Are we here?”

xvii.

The sky is enormous and the water is bigger. It doesn’t go on forever – Sarah knows it doesn’t, but she has to keep telling herself that anyways. On a Thursday the sand is full of dropouts, the retired, the jobless. They give Sarah looks of familiar misery. Sarah shoves her hands in the pockets of her jacket and hunches her shoulders and doesn’t look back.

Helena is staring at the water. “Big,” she says.

“Yeah, it’s real big.”

Helena inches closer to the water, reaches down and slaps her palm into a wave as it reaches towards her. When it gets to her she dances back again, skittish like a pony. “I don’t know how to swim,” she says.

“That’s fine,” Sarah says. “Who needs to swim, yeah? We can just watch. C’mon, go get the towels.”

Helena trots back to the car to get the towels. Sarah watches the waves crash against the shore. She checks her phone. Apparently, Cosima’s made it to Australia. In the video Delphine is laughing at the camera, wide-eyed and wondering. _Can you believe we’re here? Can you believe we made it?_

The video ends. Sarah pockets the phone, listens to the triumphant scream from Helena by the truck.

“ _Sestra!_ ” Helena belts. “You got cake!”

“Don’t eat the whole thing, it’s for both of us,” Sarah yells back.

“What kind of cake!”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Best surprise. Best present. Cake!”

Helena comes back with the towels and cake; they set up. The sun is starting to sink down the horizon. Helena scoops out some cake with her fingers and swallows it. “Make wish,” she says through crumbs.

“If you’d let me light the bloody candles—”

“Why,” Helena says. “So we can blow them out? No. Make wish on cake instead. Tastier wish.”

Sarah sighs, lets out a little bit of a laugh. “Yeah, alright,” she says, and digs her fork into the cake, and makes a wish.

xviii.

They stay on the beach for a very long time. Hours and hours. Helena’s _sestra_ eats some of the cake and Helena eats most of it, and her stomach is sad about this, and then it stops being sad. When the stars come out they make up stories about what the stars could be. The water whispers to them. Sarah doesn’t make Helena go into it.

“Think we should go back,” Sarah says after a time. Her voice is slurred with sleep and frosting. She is lying on her back on the towels, arm folded over her eyes.

“Or,” Helena says. “We sleep on sand.”

“ _No_ ,” Sarah says, with feeling but without moving.

“I will fight anyone who tries to touch us.”

“ _No_ , meathead.”

“You are no fun,” Helena says, and she flops onto her back on the towel. She turns her head to look at Sarah. “ _Sestra_.”

“Nn.”

“I didn’t mean it,” Helena whispers.

“I know, meathead.”

“You are fun.”

Sarah is silent. Asleep? No, thinking.

“You too,” she says. “This is fun.”

Helena feels the smile creeping across her mouth; she lets it come. “Yes,” she says. “Yes. Yes. Much, much fun.”

xix.

“You’ve got the headlights on?”

“Yes, _sestra_.”

“You can see the road?”

“Yes I can see road. Yes I remember pedals. Yes I will be careful.”

“God, this is such a terrible idea.”

xx.

It’s not a terrible idea, because Helena is very careful. In the dark, she can see cars coming; she makes sure she is where the other cars aren’t, whipping by like screams of light in the dark. She checks the mirror and the other mirror and the third mirror and sometimes, when Sarah isn’t looking, she turns around and looks at the road. She is careful and good and they are going to be safe.

She knows she’s good, because Sarah trusts her enough to fall asleep.

Helena knows the moment that it happens; she can feel it. Sarah’s mind slips from her mind into a pool of water Helena doesn’t know how to swim in. Helena feels her hands relax on the steering wheel as Sarah’s worries melt. Good. She worries about Sarah all the time. She wants Sarah to get more sleep – she doesn’t know how to tell Sarah that, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want it.

Occasional lights slide over Sarah’s face, picking out the parts of her that she shares with Helena and the parts of her that aren’t Helena’s at all. Sarah snores a little bit in her sleep. Helena probably doesn’t snore; she thinks she’d know if she did.

There’s a little wrinkle between Sarah’s eyes, when she’s sleeping. Helena changes her breathing so that her heartbeat can find Sarah’s heartbeat. She tries to send Sarah happy dreams.

xxi.

Helena plays Siobhan’s song again, but quietly. A woman sings about thunder and rain. The lights wash Sarah clean.

xxii.

“Oh, shit.” Sarah shifts in her seat. “How long was I out?”

“Not long,” Helena lies.

“Tell me you didn’t crash.”

“I did not crash,” Helena says. (She’s telling the truth this time.)

The sound as Sarah shifts in her seat. “I don’t even remember what I dreamed about,” she says. “You were there.”

“I know,” Helena says.

“Yeah?” In the daylight Sarah would probably sound skeptical, but it’s nighttime now and she sounds like she could believe in it. She sounds thoughtful.

“Yes,” Helena says.

“Thanks.”

“Always,” Helena says. “Any time. Every time.”

The sound of a body moving through air in the dark. Sarah’s hand finds Helena’s hand, the way that Sarah finds Helena every time. Their fingers lace together. This is true.

“I always liked night driving,” Sarah says. “Doesn’t feel real out there. Just you ‘n me.”

“Like womb.”

“Yeah, but with better music.”

Helena’s heart goes heavy and she goes silent. Next to her, Sarah also goes silent.

“You are thinking about her also,” Helena says.

“Amelia? Yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Helena says.

“Me too,” Sarah says. “For both of us.”

“I was still – changing,” Helena says slowly. “I was still becoming the person that I am becoming.”

Sarah squeezes her hand. “Proud of her,” she says. “Proud of you. Hard work, yeah? Becoming.”

Helena nods. “Very hard,” she says, and swallows down the waver of tears in her voice. “Very tiring. Long hard work.”

“We’re in it together, though,” Sarah says. “You ‘n me. Getting better. Being better.”

 _You never needed to be better_ , Helena thinks, but she feels the desperate squeeze of Sarah’s fingers against hers.

“Together,” she says, and squeezes back.

xxiii.

“You’ve gotten a lot better at driving.”

“I am quick learner.”

xxiv.

“Aw, Alison sent you a Snapchat. Babies are sleepin’.”

“Not for long.”

“Hey, come on, have same faith in Auntie Alison. Maybe she’ll have time to work on her mixtape.”

“Oh, poor _sestra_ Alison.”

“Maybe the boys can sing backup.”

“More like screaming.”

“Hey, are they any _worse_ than Alison’s singing – meathead, stop laughing, watch the _road_.”

xxv.

“Draw out _h_ sound. _Hhhhuy_.”

“ _Huy_.”

“Very good.”

“Alright, teach me _shit_ next.”

xxvi.

“Don’t fall asleep.”

“I’m awake.”

xxvii.

“Sarah,” Helena says.

“Mm?”

“When we get back,” Helena says. “I will have my babies and you will have Kira and your job and we will be in different houses – and. Will we still be together?”

“Yeah, ‘course,” Sarah says. She shifts a little in her seat; Helena can see her, out of the corner of her eye, face turned towards Helena. Light hits it and then goes. Light hits it and then goes. “We’ll see each other every week, yeah? For Alison’s bloody potlucks. And we’ll call each other. And you can keep sending me Snapchats every time Arthur makes a noise.”

“He said my name!”

“He really didn’t, Helena.” Sarah sighs. “But yeah. Yeah. Of course we’re gonna be together, babes.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” Helena says. The words stumble out of her mouth clumsy and terrible. If Sarah spoke Ukrainian everything would be easier. But Sarah speaks the words of Helena’s heart, so it’s alright.

“You’re never gonna lose me,” Sarah says. “Not ever. God knows we fought our way back to each other enough bloody times, yeah? Something’s gotta give us a break. We’re – ah, what’s it – we’ll never be separate. Alright?”

Helena bites the inside of her lip, nods. Her eyes blur a little but that’s fine.

“You can pull over,” Sarah says quietly. “It’s okay to cry.”

“What is word,” Helena says, flicking on the turn signal and pulling over, “for when you say thing that is true for other people but not true for you. Not black kettles. Other word.”

Sarah sighs. “It’s _hypocrite_ , meathead.”

“You are hippo crate.”

“I know you messed that up on purpose.”

“Mm.” Helena puts the park on the car, unbuckles her seatbelt, leans over the island between them to rest her head on Sarah’s shoulder. There’s the click as Sarah unbuckles her seatbelt and then her arm is over Helena’s shoulder, and her side is pressed against Helena’s side, and her head is pressed to Helena’s head.

“Love you,” Sarah says.

“How did you know?” Helena says. “That this is what I was going to say to you.”

“I always know,” Sarah says quietly.

Helena reaches for Sarah’s hand and grabs it. “You know,” she says, “sometimes I think our hearts beat at the same time.”

“They do,” Sarah says. “I know they do.”

“Sarah?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you too.”

xxviii.

“One more time?”

“Helena, I’m never gonna be able to listen to this song again.”

“Please?”

“You better not mess up the lyrics this time, you got it?”

“I know there is no lunch in London Calling.”

“You sure?”

“ _Yes,_ Sarah, play _song_.”

xxix.

“One more time?”

“We’re gonna be at Sio—at my house in two bloody minutes.”

“We can sit in car.”

“This is the last time.”

“I know.”

xxx.

 _I never felt so much alike alike alike—_ and the song ends. The car ticks to itself very softly as it cools down. The house that is now Sarah’s is dark, because Kira is staying with Alison. She isn’t allowed to use Snapchat on school nights – which Helena thinks is silly – so Helena doesn’t know how she’s doing. That’s a lie. Kira is doing well; Helena would be able to feel it if she wasn’t.

They sit in the car. The quiet isn’t a bad thing.

“Hey,” Sarah says. “You wanna come in? For the night, I mean. Alison can watch the babies ‘til tomorrow.”

Helena turns to look at her. “Sleepings over?”

“Yeah, sure,” Sarah says. She crooks up the corner of her mouth into part of a smile, gives it to Helena like it’s easy. “Sleepings over.”

Helena laughs in a loud bubble-burst; she can’t help it. “Yes!” she says. “Yes. I would like this. Please.”

Sarah unbuckles her seatbelt and hops out of the car, stretches her legs. “ _Holy_ shit,” she says. “Pins and bloody needles.”

“Also my legs feel bad,” Helena offers as she gets out of the truck.

“This house is too big,” Sarah says quietly, unlocking the front door, flicking on the lights. Helena doesn’t really remember how Siobhan smelled, or how Siobhan’s house smelled when it was Siobhan’s house, but it’s Sarah’s house now and it doesn’t smell like whatever it could smell like. It just smells like Sarah, and empty space.

“Get a boy mouse,” she offers, stepping inside and pulling off her shoes. “They will make more mice. Let the mice go! You will never worry about quiet house again.”

“Piss off,” Sarah says. “I’m makin’ tea. You want any?”

“Yes please many sugars.”

“You’re a bloody nightmare,” Sarah mutters. She turns on lights all the way into the kitchen, does some things with a tea kettle that Helena doesn’t understand. Helena sits at the kitchen table and watches Sarah make tea.

“Good day,” she says. “Yes?”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Good day.”

“I am glad,” Helena says, “to spend our born day with you.”

Sarah nods to herself. “Me too,” she says. She drops into the seat across the table from Helena, reaches for Helena’s hand. Helena gives it to her. Sarah plays with their fingers, matches her fingerprints to Helena’s fingerprints.

“Y’know Alison was gonna throw us a party,” she says.

“With cake?”

Sarah gives her a look. Helena pulls her lips between her teeth.

“We can still have a party,” Sarah says. Her voice is shaky and uncertain. “But – but today, I just wanted – sorry, it’s selfish, I get it.”

“No,” Helena says. “Not that.” She folds Sarah’s hands between her own.

“Sarah,” she says. “I didn’t want anything more than spending today with you. I wanted that more than any other thing. Thank you for letting me have this day. My _sestra_ and me. All I ever wanted, I think, was this.”

Sarah nods a few frantic times. “God,” she says, “I can’t believe I’m crying again. The bloody worst.”

“Don’t tell,” Helena whispers loudly, “but I am crying also. Oh no.”

Sarah snorts. “Oh shit!”

“Oh _shit_ ,” Helena says, and Sarah snorts again. Behind them, the teakettle starts to whistle.

“I’m gonna get that,” Sarah says. She doesn’t let go of Helena’s hands.

xxxi.

“Sometimes I get so scared that I’m gonna ruin her life somehow. She’s made it through all this and – I don’t get how, I’m a bloody wreck. What if she lives through assassins and corporations and surgeries and bloody guns to the head and the reason she doesn’t – the thing stopping her is _me?_ ‘Cause I’m such a shit mum? What if I’m the bloody reason she doesn’t—”

The couch bathed in warm gold light. The painting of Siobhan, propped on the fireplace, watching over the two of them: _it’s going to be alright, chickens, loves. Lovely girls. It’s going to be alright_.

Helena pets Sarah’s hair. _Shh_ , she says, and things she hopes that Sarah believes.

After a while, Sarah stops crying.

xxxii.

Helena borrows one of Sarah’s sleep-shirts, and a spare toothbrush. Sarah is right: the house is very large, and very lonely. Helena will come over here more. Helena will bring her beautiful sons, who will shit everywhere and scream loud enough to fill up the entire house. She’ll yell the lyrics to London Calling at Sarah, so Sarah is too full of sound to even think about being frightened. It will be good. She’s decided.

Sarah is already in the big bed, lying on one side of it. She left one side of it open for Helena, like the way part of Helena’s heart will always be Sarah’s, like the way Helena’s life is always open so Sarah can fit in it. Helena takes the place that Sarah has made for her. She turns off the light. She feels her sister’s heartbeat matching hers in the dark.

xxxiii.

“Happy birthday, Helena.”

“Happy birthday, Sarah.”

xxxiv.

Helena dreams that the scars on her back grow beautiful white feathers; she knows that her wings are strong enough to carry her, now that they have had the time to grow from her wounds.

In her dream Sarah is there. Helena knows that they are both dreaming, and when they wake Sarah will roll over and ask _did you dream about—_ and Helena will say _yes, yes, I dreamed about you_.

She presses her hands to Sarah’s back and pulls the wings from her shoulderblades. They’re beautiful. Sarah’s wings are beautiful, and Helena and Sarah are beautiful.

 _Let’s go_ , Sarah says. She takes Helena’s hand. They fly.

**Author's Note:**

> We're going sailing out on the silver sea  
> Air is full of treasure, you and me  
> All along the shore you can hear the mermaids singing  
> No one will believe us, no one will believe us  
> Below on the strand, the sea is answering the land  
> No one will believe us  
> \--"We're Going Sailing," Karan Casey
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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